Others
argued that cutting back on their programs would diminish Howard's
unique perspective

and
history, and that tilting toward the STEM fields would prove
misguided because

they
are not the university's traditional area of strength. Howard is the
only historically

black college that has had a
classics program since its inception . . .

A Shift in Direction
at Howard

From Undergraduate Classics to Graduate STEM Programs

By Dan Berrett

The father of the
Harlem Renaissance may well be turning in his grave.
Alain Locke, the first African American Rhodes Scholar
and chief interpreter of the Harlem Renaissance, guided
Howard University’s philosophy department for 32 years.
It remains the only stand-alone philosophy program among
the nation's historically black colleges. In a move that
is distressing some faculty and alumni, the department
that Locke once led could be stripped of its independent
status and merged with classics and religion, if
sweeping recommendations unveiled last month by
Howard University's president,
Sidney Ribeau, take
effect.

Similar fates could
befall 20 undergraduate programs—or more than a third of
those now offered—including African studies and
anthropology, after a yearlong review by a presidential
commission on academic renewal. The commission, composed
of 53 staff and faculty members, students, alumni, and
external experts, was charged with doing a top-to-bottom
review of Howard’s academic offerings. Members submitted
a report to Ribeau, who released his own set of
recommendations—in some cases differing from the
commission—in October.

It was the first
thorough review of the entire university's academic
offerings in the institution’s history, and it was made
urgent by twin imperatives. The first is current
economic reality, in ways that are both common to other
universities and unique to Howard, said
Alvin Thornton,
special adviser to Howard’s president, and leader of the
review. “A combination of incremental growth in academic
programs over the years and incremental budgeting to
support them has led to circumstances in which many of
the university’s diverse degree programs are
under-funded,” Thornton wrote in an
introduction to the committee’s recommendations.
“The university supports too many academic programs
across far too broad a spectrum.”

The other imperative driving the
change is the historical moment in which Howard finds
itself. Decades after the end of segregation, some at
Howard wonder if it needs to offer the broad range of
programs it did when black students couldn't enroll at
many universities. “We think we don’t have to try to
offer 171 programs,” Thornton told Inside Higher Ed,
explaining why the university is streamlining its
programs.

The changes were in
keeping with a vision staked out by Ribeau, who assumed
the presidency in 2008. Graduate studies and, in
particular, doctoral research will grow more central to
Howard’s mission, according to this new vision. Science,
technology, engineering and mathematics [STEM] will
become areas of emphasis, as will the health sciences.
“Howard is and wants to be an enhanced research
university,” said
Thornton.

Pushing Back

A choice to deploy
resources in one place means, inevitably, that these
resources will be drawn from somewhere else.
Undergraduate programs would be the hardest-hit under
the proposal released by Ribeau. Some faculty members
still hope for changes in the plan. Comments on the
recommendations are due to Ribeau on Dec. 1, and final
determinations will be voted on by the university's
trustees in January. If adopted, some changes would take
place immediately, while others would be phased in
gradually, said Thornton.

The recommendations
stunned and saddened some faculty members. "We were just
totally shocked that the decision was made, given the
legacy of African studies here at Howard," said
Mbye
Cham, head of that department, which would see its
program cut on the undergraduate level in favor of
placing greater emphasis on graduate teaching and
scholarship. “Our students are very, very concerned.
We’re vigorously pushing back.”

Cham acknowledged
that the undergraduate program had produced few
graduates—an average of two per year—though he argued
that these students produced high-quality work that had
been internationally recognized. Even though the
recommendations would shutter the undergraduate program
and strengthen the graduate,
Cham worried about the
message such a shift would send to funders and to other
universities. "Howard has always been looked at as a
trailblazer," he said. "We don’t believe that Howard is
running away from African studies, but I think the way
that it is going to be interpreted is that there is a
diminished commitment."

Others argued that
cutting back on their programs would diminish Howard's
unique perspective and history, and that tilting toward
the STEM fields would prove misguided because they are
not the university's traditional area of strength.
Howard is the only historically black college that has
had a classics program since its inception, said
Rudolph
Hock, associate professor and chair of the classics
department and it recently has produced a Rhodes
Scholar. Despite its orientation to the ancient past, it
holds applicability to other disciplines, including the
STEM fields, he said: a student studying medicine, for
example, would benefit from understanding
Hippocrates.
“We’re trying to remind people that this should be
embraced and supported—and even more supported,” said
Hock. “We’re not rolling over and playing dead.”

Some cited the way
their disciplines inform Howard's mission. "The largest
and most general problem that philosophy solves is
self-knowledge," said
Charles Verharen, professor of
philosophy. Such an endeavor carries a special meaning
at Howard,
Verharen argued, because students there are
taught to study not only canonical Western philosophy,
but also the intellectual traditions of Africa. "Coming
to self-knowledge for African Americans has been
distorted for 500 years using the tools of science,
economics and politics," said Verharen.

Still other
scholars worried about the wider ripple effects a cut to
programs at Howard would create. “The consequences of a
closure will not only negatively impact students and
faculty at our institution, but it will also have a
bearing on the discipline of anthropology overall, the
African American community, and other peoples of African
descent,"
Flordeliz T. Bugarin,
Eleanor King,
Mark Mack
and
Arvilla Payne-Jackson, who are members of Howard's
combined sociology and anthropology department, wrote in
this month's issue of
Anthropology News. Closing the undergraduate major
would hamper the field's recruitment of minority
students, the professors argued. It also would imperil
nine research projects now under way, from work at
New
York City's African burial ground to research at James
Island, a locus of the Gambian slave trade.

‘The Uniqueness of Howard’

Program reviews are
far from rare, especially as the sagging national
economy straps college budgets and forces institutions
to make tough choices. These reviews tend to be imbued
with the ethos of the marketplace, often measuring a
discipline's relevance by the number of its graduates,
among other indicators. They often pit “practical”
education against the classical
liberal arts. And many in the liberal arts feel
their traditions are not being valued as they should.

A similar worry has
been expressed at Howard. "Humanities is not the 'fat'
to be trimmed for [the] sake of an education favored by
Washington," Alicia M. Bell, a 2002 graduate who
double-majored in biology and classics,
wrote recently in The Hilltop, Howard's student
newspaper. "Our nation needs scientists and engineers,
but more than ever, we also need highly trained scholars
of the humanities to innovatively use critical thinking
skills—in the tradition of Du Bois—to help provide the
leadership necessary to address the most pressing
challenges of our day."

A closer look at
the departments singled out for cutting, merging and
curtailment, however, reveals that this tension has
played out less predictably at Howard: practical
undergraduate fields such as hospitality management and
radiation therapy were more likely to be axed than their
liberal arts counterparts. Engineering fields on the
master's level also face closing, though
Errol C. Noel,
chair of the civil engineering department, expressed
confidence that his program would endure. "We, in Civil
Engineering, know that we have substantial evidence to
demonstrate sustained quality productivity for over a
decade,"
Noel wrote in an e-mail, though he also
supported the larger premise of the review. "I believe
that the university is on the right track in reviewing
programs with the aim of redefining what HU must be.
Unfortunately, some programs will have to be eliminated,
restructured [and] merged."

In fact, few
faculty members at Howard—including those whose
departments would feel the brunt of the proposed
changes—disputed the need to rigorously review the
university's academic offerings and make changes.
Howard's historical role means that such reviews are
thorny, said
Verharen.

“What makes
Howard’s case different is the uniqueness of Howard,” he
said, citing the institution’s focus on disenfranchised
and marginalized students since its charter was granted
in 1867. “What we do at Howard is solve problems that
other institutions may not have the interest in solving
and the cultural background that would provide the most
adequate solution,” he continued. “Any changes to the
academic program that don’t preserve what is unique
about Howard are problematic.”

Advocates for the
set of changes that have been recommended stress that
they are equally mindful of this obligation to Howard's
role.
Thornton pointed out that the cuts to
undergraduate courses need to be seen in their larger
context. While he acknowledged that Ribeau opted to cut
some programs the commission wanted to strengthen and to
bolster others that the commission wanted to scuttle,
Thornton said the president sided with the commission 80
percent of the time. More important, Ribeau affirmed the
two most important facets of the recommendations, as he
saw them: strengthening Howard's emphasis on graduate
education and altering how undergraduate courses are
delivered. The changes on the undergraduate level
include starting a new center for academic excellence
and adopting a more interdisciplinary focus. They are
meant to improve students' core skills: writing clearly
and grammatically, completing applied mathematics
courses, and developing critical thinking skills. "That,
to me, is the important thing," said Thornton, of the
two facets of the recommendations. "Those are not small
changes."

How to Measure the Unmeasurable?

In addition to
debate over specific departments facing closure,
arguments also have surfaced over process and shared
vision. Several faculty members questioned how some of
the six criteria on which their programs were judged—tie
to mission, academic quality, research, academic
centrality and necessity, student enrollment, and
sustainability—can be defined, much less evaluated.

"The six criteria
seem quite reasonable as components of the evaluation
process," wrote Lorenzo Morris, professor of political
science, in the faculty publication,
Senate Communicator. "‘Academic quality’, for
example, is fundamental. Unfortunately, however, that
does not make it empirical or measurable, much less
quantifiable."

Thornton agreed
that these categories cannot be measured precisely—and
said they were never meant to be. "There was never any
attempt to be completely empirical about this," he said.
"The data was never said to be determinative or
infallible." While commission members drew upon data,
this information did not form the entire basis for their
recommendations, he said. Ribeau's larger vision
mattered more. "Some programs that had very good data
were not necessarily viewed as being in the strategic
direction in which Howard wanted to go," said Thornton.

Others criticized
the composition of the commission, which was split into
smaller groups and reviewed individual programs.
Hock,
of the classics department, noted that reviewers were
not versed in his discipline specifically, or in the
humanities more generally. "The composition of the
commission seemed to be absurd," he said. "It’s as if
they had me, a classicist, go to evaluate the pharmacy
department. What do I know about that?"

Thornton said the
commission's determinations were based on several
factors: self-assessments, survey responses, performance
data, accreditation reports, and prior program
evaluations, though he also has acknowledged that there
had been disagreement with the conclusions the
commission reached.

He also rejected the notion that Howard's faculty had
not been sufficiently and formally involved in the
review process, which was a charge leveled by
Verharen.
The commission was composed primarily of faculty
members, he said, and the vetting and review period,
which is intended to solicit faculty feedback, is under
way. "Howard's faculty involvement in the academic
process is at an unprecedented level by Howard and
comparable university standards," he wrote in an e-mail.
"President Ribeau placed a high priority on this
dimension of the academic renewal process."

Despite the
contentious subject matter of the debate and the current
set of recommendations, Ribeau has earned high marks for
communication, transparency (a
website has been documenting the commission's work),
and, ultimately, doing what needed to be done. He
assumed the presidency at Howard after serving in the
same position at Bowling Green State University, where
he was
lauded as “charismatic, funny, accessible and a
model of collaboration, commitment and cooperation.”

Some Howard faculty
voiced similar impressions. "It's high time that this be
done," said Verharen, adding that
Ribeau had taken vital
steps to reform the administration; for example, the
president made the university's budget more public.
"He’s done a remarkable job with trying to change the
administrative structure of Howard."

WASHINGTON (Jan.
29, 2011) – Today, the Howard University Board of
Trustees led by Board Chairman A. Barry Rand unanimously
approved an academic renewal plan and the construction
of two residence halls. The plans will continue the
University’s historic mission of enriching student
learning opportunities, strengthening graduate and
professional programs as well as advancing research
initiatives.

“The Board’s
approval of the President’s recommendations represents
an important milestone in the history of the University
and culminates extraordinary collaborative work by the
University’s faculty, students, staff and alumni," Rand
said.

Howard University
President Sidney A. Ribeau presented his recommendations
to the Board during this week’s meeting of the full
board after an inclusive process that engaged and sought
input from every segment of the University and academic
community.

“Universities must
periodically review and assess themselves to respond to
developments in higher education and the changing needs
of our nation and the world,” Ribeau said. “At Howard,
we are doing just that. We must maintain the highest
standards of academic and administrative excellence.”

The
academic renewal plan approved by the Board achieves six
major strategic goals:

Revises the model for
the delivery of undergraduate education and
increases interdisciplinary academic
programming;

Increases the
University’s commitment to internationalism
and global studies;

Streamlines and focuses graduate and
professional offerings and encourages
increased research

Among the
current 171-degree programs offered, 71 undergraduate,
graduate and professional programs were recommended for
restructuring or closure—22 undergraduate, 11 graduate
and 38 graduate professional programs. Students enrolled
in modified or closed programs will be given an
opportunity to complete their degrees, and program
tenured faculty will not lose their positions.

“Historically, Howard had to offer a comprehensive range
of programs to meet the demand of students of color who
were unable to attend other universities,” Ribeau said.
“We no longer have to be everything to everyone. We have
identified specific areas of emphasis and we plan to be
leaders in those areas.”

The
academic renewal initiative includes the restructuring
of the core undergraduate curriculum and the creation of
a single “freshman experience" for all entering
students, regardless of their school or division. In
addition, existing STEM programs will be improved to
increase cutting-edge learning opportunities to prepare
graduates for careers in such rapidly growing fields as
nanotechnology. The Board also approved the President’s
recommendations to retain Bachelors degrees in African
Studies and Philosophy.
View Full Academic ProgramChanges.

The Board has
approved the construction of two new residence halls
along the Fourth Street corridor creating a new
undergraduate residential village on the east side of
the University's main campus. The sites include the old
Bethune Hall as well as Fourth and Bryant Streets,
currently Bethune Annex parking lot. The residential
complexes combined will provide housing for more than
1300 students, and strongly support President Ribeau's
New Academic Renewal Plan for the University.

The final
phase of the academic renewal process began in 2008
after the Board charged Ribeau to “renew the academic
enterprise.” In fall 2009, Ribeau established the
Presidential Commission on Academic Renewal (PCAR) as
part of the academic renewal process, and Howard began a
faculty-led comprehensive review of all its academic
offerings. The overarching goal was to ensure that all
programs are consistent with the University’s mission
and resources are aligned with its academic priorities.

In Fall
2010, the Commission submitted its final report to the
President recommending a series of university-wide
enhancements and program-specific mergers,
transformations, additions and eliminations. Ribeau
presented a set of university-wide enhancements and
program-specific adjustments for review and comment from
the university community. This review process continued
for an additional three months. The period of
deliberation was fruitful; faculty and other
stakeholders offered alternative proposals, which were
included in the final plan approved by the Board.
Read more on Academic Renewal.

Howard University is a private,
research university that is comprised of 12 schools and
colleges. Founded in 1867, students pursue studies in
more than 120 areas leading to undergraduate, graduate
and professional degrees. Since 1998, the University has
produced two Rhodes Scholars, two Truman Scholars, a
Marshall Scholar, 21 Fulbright Scholars and 11 Pickering
Fellows. Howard also produces more on campus
African-American Ph.D. recipients than any other
university in the United States. For more information on
Howard University, call 202-238-2330, or visit the
University’s Web site at
www.howard.edu

“We
have lost confidence in Hazel O’Leary’s
leadership as president of Fisk and,
reluctantly, have come to the painful
judgment that she should be asked to
resign,” the letter began. “As well, we
have serious concerns about the
collective wisdom of the Board of
Trustees in apparently endorsing and
supporting decisions made by and the
performance of Ms. O’Leary that imperil
the university.”

The letter, signed by 18 Fisk alumni,
including a Pulitzer Prize winner, was
delivered to Robert Norton, president of
the Fisk board, on Oct. 15, and shared
with Fisk faculty over the weekend. . .
.

The letter was
signed by alumni who include Pulitzer-prize winning
author
David Levering Lewis, Vanderbilt professor
Lucius T. Outlaw Jr., and a high-profile list of
graduates who include ambassadors, physicians,
academics and retired military.

Collectively,
they blasted the university’s leadership for
attempting to sell off the art collection that
artist
Georgia O’Keeffe had entrusted to the school
from her late husband’s collection. The authors also
blasted the university for allowing its attorneys to
argue in court “the emotionally bankrupt and morally
egregious declaration that art created by Caucasians
is of no relevance to the education of Fisk’s
African American students, only art created by
African Americans.” In court, O’Leary argued that
the art sale is the only way to keep the university
from closing its doors. The university runs a $2
million annual budget deficit, has mortgaged every
building on campus and has no money left in its
discretionary endowment fund.—Tennessean

Frank M. Snowden Jr.
passed away on February 18 of this year in Washington,
D.C., after a long and celebrated life in a variety of
professional vocations—instructor, scholar,
administrator, diplomat. The classics world can
justifiably claim that it has lost one of its giants.
Professor Snowden graduated from the Boston Latin School
in 1928 and proceeded to Harvard University, where he
was awarded his bachelor's (1932), master's (1933), and
doctoral (1944) degrees in classics.

He began his professional career as an instructor in
Latin, French, and English at Virginia State College
(1933–1936) and then moved to Spelman College and
Atlanta University, where he was an instructor in
classics (1936–1940). From then until 1990 he was a
member of the faculty at Howard University . .
. . —WashingtonPost

* * *
* *

An Impending
Death for Anthropology at Howard University—28
October 2010—written by Flordeliz T. Bugarin, Eleanor
King, Mark Mack and Arvilla Payne-Jackson of
Howard University—Without a program at
Howard U., anthropology stands to be further
distanced from the African American population. Of
105 HBCUs nationally, only 36% offer anthropology
courses. Out of these, the vast majority (87%) has
only a few classes, and most of the offerings
primarily service sociology programs, with no degree
option. Two colleges (Coppin State College and
Morgan State University) offer minors in
anthropology. Three institutions offer a major:
Lincoln, Spelman, and Howard Universities. Lincoln
and Spelman only bestow degrees in cultural
anthropology. Howard’s program is unique among
HBCUs in requiring students to take classes in all
five sub-fields, including applied anthropology. It
has launched a number of professionals in all these
fields and is singularly well positioned to make
further contributions to the discipline because of
the nature of the University itself.

Howard has a
wide-diversity of black students from all over the
world. Approximately 11,000 students enroll at
the university on an annual basis. Out of that
student body, about 9% come from Washington, D.C.;
75% come from states throughout the United States;
11% are international students that represent 91
countries and U.S. possessions; and 5% are
international students who are permanent U.S.
residents (http://www.howard.edu/facts/facts.pdf,
accessed October 1, 2010). In addition there is a
huge variation in socioeconomic background that adds
to that diversity. In any given year, the
University witnesses a gamut of students graduating,
from the homeless to the children of millionaires.
It is the perfect place to recruit and train
minority students; and it is the ideal place to
encourage black students to give back to
under-served black and other populations around the
world. Regardless of major, our program offers
Howard students the ability to be more culturally
aware in a global community, develop explanations
about cultural similarities and differences, and
create better solutions to the world’s most
challenging problems.

Perhaps the
state of anthropology at Howard University is a
microcosm of the status of the discipline overall.
Until recently the American Anthropological
Association (AAA), in keeping with its stance on
race, has not kept track of minority members.
However, sections and interest groups can give some
idea of the overall numbers. As of 2008 all sections
and interest groups with significant numbers of
minority members made up less than 16% of the 11,000
registered members (King 2008). The actual number
was and is still undoubtedly much lower as many of
the groups have a significant number of majority
members as well. The Association of Black
Anthropologists, for example, had 329 members in
2008, or 3% of the total, but a number of them were
of other ethnicities (King 2008).—AANET

Beginning in the 1830s, public and private
higher education institutions established to
serve African-Americans operated in
Pennsylvania and Ohio, the Border States,
and the states of the old Confederacy. Until
recently the vast majority of people of
African descent who received post-secondary
education in the United States did so in
historically black institutions. Spurred on
by financial and accreditation issues,
litigation to assure compliance with court
decisions, equal higher education
opportunity for all citizens, and the role
of race in admissions decisions, interest in
the role, accomplishments, and future of
Historically Black Colleges and Universities
has been renewed. This volume touches upon
these issues. Historically Black Colleges
and Universities (HBCUs) are a diverse group
of 105 institutions.

They vary in
size from several hundred students to over 10,000.
Prior to Brown v. Board of Education, 90 percent of
African-American postsecondary students were
enrolled in HBCUs. Currently the
105 HBCUs
account
for 3 percent of the nations educational
institutions, but they graduate about one-quarter of
African-Americans receiving college degrees. The
competition that HBCUs currently face in attracting
and educating African-American and other students
presents both challenges and opportunities. Despite
the fact that numerous studies have found that HBCUs
are more effective at retaining and graduating
African-American students than predominately white
colleges, HBCUs have serious detractors.

Perhaps because
of the increasing pressures on state governments to
assure that public HBCUs receive comparable funding
and provide programs that will attract a broader
student population, several public HBCUs no longer
serve primarily African-American students. There is
reason to believe, and it is the opinion of several
contributors to this book, that in the changing
higher education environment HBCUs will not survive,
particularly those that are financially weak. The
contributors to this volume provide cutting-edge
data as well as solid social analysis of this major
concern in black life as well as American higher
education as a whole.

To
their disadvantage, few Americans—and
few in higher education—know much about
the successes of historically Black
colleges and universities. How is it
that historically Black colleges
graduate so many low-income and
academically poorly prepared students?
How do they manage to do so well with
students "as they are", even when
adopting open admissions policies?

In this volume, contributors from a wide
spectrum of Black colleges offer
insights and examples of the policies
and practice—such as retention
strategies, co-curricular activities and
approaches to mentoring—which underpin
their disproportionate success with
populations that too often fail in other
institutions.

This book also challenges the
myth that these colleges are segregated institutions
and that teachers of color are essential to minority
student success. HBCUs employ large numbers of
non-Black faculty who demonstrate the ability to
facilitate the success of African American students.
This book offers valuable lessons for faculty,
faculty developers, student affairs personnel and
administrators in the wider higher education
community–lessons that are all the more urgent as
they face a growing racially diverse student
population. While, for HBCUs themselves, this book
reaffirms the importance of their mission today, it
also raises issues they must address to maintain the
edge they have achieved.

According to the
author, this society has historically exerted
considerable pressure on black females to fit into one
of a handful of stereotypes, primarily, the Mammy, the
Matriarch or the Jezebel. The selfless
Mammy’s behavior is marked by a slavish devotion to
white folks’ domestic concerns, often at the expense of
those of her own family’s needs. By contrast, the
relatively-hedonistic Jezebel is a sexually-insatiable
temptress. And the Matriarch is generally thought of as
an emasculating figure who denigrates black men, ala the
characters Sapphire and Aunt Esther on the television
shows Amos and Andy and Sanford and Son, respectively.

Professor Perry
points out how the propagation of these harmful myths
have served the mainstream culture well. For instance,
the Mammy suggests that it is almost second nature for
black females to feel a maternal instinct towards
Caucasian babies.

As for the source
of the Jezebel, black women had no control over their
own bodies during slavery given that they were being
auctioned off and bred to maximize profits. Nonetheless,
it was in the interest of plantation owners to propagate
the lie that sisters were sluts inclined to mate
indiscriminately.

This memoir is based on Mrs. Park's
recollections of thirty years
(1931-1961) as a seamstress in the White
House (the administrations of Coolidge,
Hoover, Roosevelt, Truman, and
Eisenhower) and on childhood memories of
her mother's 30 years of domestic
service (Margaret 'Maggie' Rogers was
head housemaid at the White House from
1909-1939, also spanning several
administrations). It became a runaway
Best-Seller & later NBC Produced their
11 time Emmy Nominated Mini-Series on
the Life of Lillian Rogers Parks and her
Mother, Maggie Rogers.—amazon
review

The
title of Mrs. Parks's 1961 memoirs,
written with Frances Spatz Leighton, was
somewhat misleading. For although Mrs.
Parks worked as an observant White House
seamstress and maid only from the
beginning of the Hoover Administration
in 1929 to the end of the Eisenhower
years in 1961, she had been a familiar
figure at the White House since she was
a little girl. That is because her
mother, Maggie Rogers, who joined the
White House staff on the fourth day of
the Taft Administration, would often
take her daughter to work with her. And
when she did not, she would come home to
regale her family with stories of what
she had seen or heard at the White House
that day.—NYTimes